domingo, 18 de julho de 2010

Tori Amos returns to London for a solo show at The Apollo Victoria Theatre, home of the Wicked Musical. This show has Miss Amos completely without a band (usually accompanied by a bassist and drummer) making it a very intimate affair.
We missed the opening act and as always Tori started punctually at 8.30pm for a long set that would stretch for close to two hours. Renowned for her covers, we were interested to see what she would do tonight.

The set tonight surprised us all as it consisted mostly of lesser known obscure tracks from her ten albums. Bells For Her from Under The Pink opened proceedings with generous applause from Tori-philes though no Cornflake Girl, God or Past The Mission (a duet she did with Trent Reznor).

Precious Things from Little Earthquakes was a nice and pleasant surprise and then it was big hit Silent All These Years. Her version of this left us a little bit disappointed. She changed it up a bit too much and stuttered her way through it with dramatic pauses and accentuations that made the song just a bit too off kilter. The dramatic "years go by passage" seemed more passive and slightly dull and the song just didn't give much impact.

We did like Northern Lad though as things were back to normal and seemed rather poignant and fitting. The ridiculously titled The Power Of Orange Knickers was a nice little highlight and Tori did a lot of her usual double piano playing, one of her amazingly talented skills. She kept shunning her big hits in favour of obscure tracks and played the likes of Marianne and Space Dog (which had a huge clap-a-long), which delighted the hard core fans. Whilst we were hoping for a bit of Spark, or Jackie's Strength, it was nice to hear some of her (rather extensive) back catalogue getting an airing. Virginia was quite good but the real showstopper came with Me And A Gun, the song she wrote about her own rape. She faced the audience and the lights dimmed casting shadows over her face as she breathed and sighed her way unaccompanied without any piano, making the song's story all the more powerful and deep. We were transfixed by the intimacy of the moment and Tori certainly knew how to make it dramatic and powerful over such a grim subject.

She closed the set with an amazing rendition of Hey Jupiter using the synth/keyboard to do strings and it really was a showstopper of a song. We could have happily walked out then. But she returned to do Desperado, a rousing rendition of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus and closed with Take To The Sky which she squeezed in Carole King's I Feel The Earth Move in between, slapping her piano for percussion and bass before finishing off and reaching out to the audience to shake hands.

Overall, it was good to see Tori doing such an intimate gig but we fear the lack of her hits let the show down a little. Big hit Winter was conspicuously absent though she's known not to play this too often these days. With such an extensive back catalgoue, fans aren't going to get to here everything and the choice of songs was skewed towards the more obscure, perhaps more to do with the intimacy and lack of a backing band. Her covers tonight were rousing affairs and we'd hoped she'd play a few more but this was sadly not to be. One for the Tori-philes tonight with the big hits mostly left in the cupboard.